Holiday Gift Ideas

I think everyone on your holiday gift list could use one of these. Don't you?

TGIO

Thanksgiving is over and I'm, well, thankful. The first turkey dinner went okay & pretty easy. I stuck the turkey in the roaster oven and forgot about it. No basting, no tenting, no checking, nothing. It was great. I did fine with everything else, but almost forgot the potatoes and I used gravy out of a jar. Har, har, har. My sister says, "did you use rosemary in the gravy?" I say, "you'll have to ask Heinz." It always makes me laugh the way my family acts. My grandma, who is 71, says "I can never get those nice ridges on my pie crusts." I say, "The pilsbury doughboy did it, not me." Crazy people. I'm not Martha Stewart. Another bright spot from granny was when we were all sitting peacefully eating and she suddenly jumps up, knocks over her pop, and says "Where's my purse?" This is a commonly used phrase from grams. The funny part is that she's at my house, with her family, where no one would want to take her purse. What a nut.

Turkey dinner #2 was also nice. My mom was nice enough to cut up my stinky red onions before she left. Yay! No stinky onion hands for me. (At least not until I chopped up some shallots later on.) T2 got roasted in the oven over a layer of red onions while being basted with a mixture of white wine and butter. Then it got a coat of cranberry glaze. Yum, cranberries. It was also supposed to have juniper berries but they are impossible to find around here unless you want them in capsule form. Nope, don't think that would work. My husband says that's what I get for trying to be "upper class" in Springfield (aka, Springtucky). Oh well. I bet they had them in Yellow Springs. So everything went well, and The Man actually helped me in the kitchen with the second dinner. He was very helpful. And the house got mostly clean. And we had a really nice chardonnay with dinner too. Yum. I'm just starting to learn about wines and I was very pleased with myself. The Man even liked it. (He doesn't really like wine.)

And some knitting got done. I'm making a hat out of the Shark Attack I got from Insubordiknit.
I know, I know, it must seem like all I ever knit are hats and socks, but this one is different. It has earflaps. And, yes, that does make a big difference. I'm almost done so I'll have pics soon.

Now I need to go clean the turkey day mess up before I have to go to work. This is the first time in 10 years that I haven't had to be at work at 6:00am. The joys of retail.

The Trials of Turkey Day

Before I say anything else, I have to get this out of the way... I LOVE Grey's Anatomy. I'm a full-fledged addict. Pathetic, I know. It's soap operas for people who work during the day. I don't care. I love it. But Dr. Sheperd is supposed to pick Meredith, isn't he? Can't help it. I'm a dork.

Now- listen carefully- I am cooking two Thanksgiving Dinners. On the same day. Yes, you read that right. There will be two turkeys (my family are all carnivores), two gravies, two green bean casseroles, two pecan pies, two sweet potatoes with sugar, etc. Am I crazy, you ask. Why yes, yes I am. I'm sitting here blubbing my lips with my fingers in that characteristic crazy lady way right now. And I am sure to get kookier with every passing hour. I need to clean the entire house, or at least the downstairs, too. I'm not known for my housekeeping, but it is Thanksgiving after all so I should really try a little harder. See, my family wants dinner early and I'm the only one who's volunteered. No problem. But I had already insisted in making dinner for my husband's family in the evening. I'm a fool. And how could I possibly ask one of them to come at a different time? I'm a people pleaser, I couldn't. I'm also a control freak and I usually don't want anyone to help at all. Not this time, no way. I'm putting turkey #1 in the roaster oven I got for Christmas last year. (no control over that, if you open the lid, you lose most of the heat. big step for me.) I'm asking my mom, my sister and sister-in-law to bring a side dish. Normally I wouldn't let them, cause of the control thing, but this year I will. I got myself into the same pickle last year so I had "Thanksgiving Breakfast" instead of dinner. I liked it but no one showed up at the same time and they all complained about the lack of turkey. Wah. Oh well, this too shall pass, right? I can't wait for Friday morning. (And mom, if you're reading this, don't feel bad. I did it all to myself. I think I must like the pressure.)

So, if you haven't guessed, there's been no knitting. I did get my sock exchange yarn though. It's Lorna's Laces in denim from Jimmy Beans Wool. Now I have to decide on a design. I better get crackin'. It's only 25 days till they need to be mailed. Good thing I knit fast. It's the over pleasing that takes so long.
Gratuitous Kid Picture

Smile dammit!
(and light a candle for me at the shrine of the Gobbler Gods)

Rambling On

I've tried to post the picture for our wonderful sock exchange about a jillion times and it's NOT WORKING! Sorry gals, and guys?, no picture for you. I will try to explain the button so you can get a nice mental image. HA! Picture eight skeins of Koigu with the words "Holiday Knits Sox Exchange" running over them. And a fuzzy little head down on the bottom right side. I'm guessing that's one of Ariane's little munchikins. Can you see it?

Enough about that. I'm having a crazy whacked out day. Things don't make sense. Here, look at my list...
1. I can't post a frickin' picture to my frickin' blog.
2. We are working on tornadoes here. Tornadoes happen in the spring, not November!
3. These damn websites keep making the minimum number of characters for a password longer! Dammit, don't they know I use the same password for everything and it is only 6 characters long and I don't have time to try to remember anything else!
4. The Man said he cleaned the toilet. NOT! He wiped the seat off with a Clorox clean-up wipe. Meanwhile, I cleaned the nasty ring of crud from inside the toilet. We've been married 9 years and he's never cleaned the inside of the toilet.
5. My dog is totally freaking out over above mentioned toilet. She stood and growled and barked at the thing for a good 30 minutes and is now currently standing guard over it right now. Like, since it's finally clean, it's going to sprout legs and run away.
6. I made a list.

On the bright side, I ordered my sock yarn for my sock pal today. I'm so excited to get started! I told The Man about this little adventure and he laughed at me! He said, "You can't finish anything for your family, why do you think you can knit something fo a perfect stranger?" Duh! My family knows not to expect much from me, but with a stranger I have to keep up appearances! There's a lot more pressure when it's someone you don't know. It's like trying to impress a blind date. You try to be as courteous and prompt as possible, otherwise they'll find out what a loser you are. Your family has already found out, so you don't work as hard for them. (And by "hard", I mean fast.) Anyway, I'm excited, and that's half the battle.

I also ordered some yarn from Insubordiknit. It's called Shark Attack. It's greenish-blue with little gorey puffs of red fluff mixed in. I was thinking gauntlets, but now maybe I'm leaning towards a hat. I swatched it up and can't quite decide. I'll think a little bit and get back at ya.

It is now time for the kidlets to go to bed. I'm waiting for the usual protests, but at the last warning bell Aidan said "okay". Wow, talk about knock me over. He must be tired, as am I.

Mo' Socks

Well, I have now been trying to download a picture for the new sock exchange that I joined for SIX days now! I'm giving up. The website for the Holiday Knit's Sox Exchange is here. You'll have to do without the picture for now. And here are my answers to the questionaire, dear secret sock sister. (Sorry I took so long, see above mentioned picture posting issue.)

1. My foot is 8 1/2 inches long and 8 inches at it's widest circumference.
2. I love all sock yarns! I'm not crazy about cotton, but everything else is fab. I guess I should say the one's I have enjoyed the most are Mountain Colors, Cherry Tree Hill, Opal, and some Regia fair isle stuff. But my experience is a bit limited.
3. I usually do rib patterns, but I'm not picky. I'm not so great at the lace, which could explain the lack thereof, but I think that lace socks are very pretty.
4. If you haven't figured it out, I'm pretty easy (ask my husband, ba-dum-dum). I love all colors. Serious. There's not one color I've met that I haven't liked in one way or another. And solids vs. stripes? Surprise me!
5. No allergies here, thank goodness. How can you knit without wool, alpaca, angora, etc? I suppose if I had to, I would, but it wouldn't be pretty.
6. We celebrate the family on Christmas.

I hope that clears things up. Now I'm gonna go kick Blogger.com's butt.

Three Hats & a Baby(doll)

I'm done with the hats! But that's not the biggest news! Abbey has officially finished her first project! It only took 4 months and a lot of help from Mommy, but she now has a pink hat for her baby to wear. She was so proud of herself! (Can't ya tell?) And she is modeling the new hat I made for her. It's made out of Paintbox by Knit One, Crochet Too in a pink and blue colorway. (Those are her two favorite colors right now. Before it was pink, pink, pink, but then we got the Cinderella DVD and blue worked it's way in there.) The yarn reminds a lot of Noro Kureyon but with less vegetable matter, and it's much easier to find around here. For some reason it takes the local shops around here months to get Kureyon in and they sell out almost instantly. The price is the same and so's the yardage. The only thing I didn't like was that it didn't seem to change colors as frequently, but it could have just been that colorway. The third hat that's done is the Chemo cap for my friend. I don't have any pictures, so use your imagination. Ha ha! I'll try to get a pic later. Heck, I might even model it. That'd be amazing, huh?

I also have some other gratuitous kid pictures to share, so here it goes.
This is Abbey and her best friend Mackenzie. Abbey is a pretty pink princess and Kenzie is a Diva. Halloween, what fun. (And by the way, I made Abbey's dress. Pat, pat myself on the back.)
And this is Aidan and his buddy
Brendan. I've given up on trying to make Aidan's costumes because all he wants is SuperHero stuff. Two years ago it was Spiderman, last year it was Batman and this year the Red Power Ranger. (Another BTW, apparently every kid wants to be the red power ranger because that one costs more than any other color! I kept saying, "Are you sure you don't want to blue? Or white?". Nope, it was red all the way. And, of course, he HAD to have muscles.) I'm so glad the kids are still at the age where they get tired before I do. An hour and they're pooped. Yay for mom! But they still got so much candy that we still have a ton left. I tried letting them eat it all the first few days to get it over with, but it was too much. It will probably get thrown out because I think they've forgotten about it. They haven't asked for it in a few days so maybe we're in the clear.
Other fall adventures included the Yellow Springs street fair where we saw these guys...
And lots of other interesting things
including a vendor selling marionettes. Yeah, I'm a sucker. Aidan got a purple dinosaur and Abbey got a black pony. And yes they have been tangled up many times. But the kids love them and they come apart pretty easy so I can untangle them. And check out the pink sweater that Abbey is wearing. I made it! It's a pattern from Debbie Bliss and it's knitted from her Cashmerino Aran. It's super soft and yummy and makes me want one for myself. But it did take 8 balls to make this tiny one and, at $8 a ball, I don't see it in my future anytime soon. Oh, but one can dream.
Well, the evil side of Aidan has made an appearance this morning so I must go exorcise the demons.